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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23996797">Johnny’s Broken Heart</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sp00py/pseuds/Sp00py'>Sp00py</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bendy and the Ink Machine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Abused musical instruments, Character Death, Other, Unrequired Love, Violence, body transformation, implied Samsie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 21:27:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,462</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23996797</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sp00py/pseuds/Sp00py</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Johnny loved perhaps a little too easily.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Johnny’s Broken Heart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Johnny was a strange lad. You had to be, to work in the Music Department, but he felt he was stranger than most. For one, he really liked Sammy Lawrence. Not a lot of people did. In fact, Sammy seemed to fight everyone above, below, and left and right of him just for the hell of it. Made him a man not even a mother could love, but a guy sure could fall for.</p><p>He also really liked Susie, and that confused him more than it should have. Guys were supposed to like gals. That was how the world worked, but Johnny had never had much interest in girls. They had interest in him, but his fingers would rather be caressin’ the ivories than a girl’s ivory thighs.</p><p>It weren’t even no trouble that Susie liked Sammy and Sammy sure seemed to like Susie. Johnny had no delusions about either of them and himself, so he was real happy they liked one another so well. And it certainly never hurt to imagine, did it?</p><p>His church-goin’ folks would be downright horrified, ‘stead of just disappointed.</p><p>Those fantasies all came crashing down hard, though, when he walked into the studio one fine day. Made it all the way to his organ before the screaming began. Not fear, like there was a fire, but anger. Like someone <em> was </em> the fire. Johnny abandoned his bench to press an ear to the door. Right outside, in earshot of anyone who cared to listen, Susie and Sammy were having one hell of a row. Something about someone named Allison, something about Susie being <em> replaced </em> . Sammy was keeping his cool, though Johnny was inclined to side with Susie on this. Who could replace her? She <em> was </em> Alice Angel. Sammy was trying to say he had no part in it, but he was the director of the whole department. Surely he had some sway?</p><p>Johnny wasn’t going to say any of that, though. He wasn’t even going to let them know he had a front-row seat to this. Especially when they started hissing real low at each other, like snakes, but with words. Mean words. <em> Personal </em> words. Words God himself would blush to hear, and Johnny sure wasn’t meant to.</p><p>Then silence. Footsteps retreating in two opposite directions, one sharp and the other solid. Neither happy. Johnny remembered he had to breathe to stay alive.</p><p>After that, work went on like normal, but without Susie’s lovely blonde head to sigh wistfully at. Sammy became ten times meaner, somehow, and that poor new actress was good — great even — but she was no Susie. Wasn’t her fault, and everyone loved her, even Johnny, but her take on Alice was new, and that just made Johnny sad in a way he hadn’t expected. He wasn’t too partial to the character, not like Susie was, but seeing her changed like that, well, it just didn’t feel right, you know?</p><p>But change was inevitable. It happened to everyone, everything. The studio was no different.</p><p>The studio changed a lot, these days. Ink dripped down the walls. Things groaned and lurched in the darkened halls. Johnny missed hotdogs.</p><p>He missed hotdogs bad, wanted them loaded up with everything under the sun. Even the stuff only bastards got, like cheese and onions. That hotdog man could even spit in the bun right in front of Johnny, and he’d (probably) still eat it. So long as it wasn’t his current diet of bacon soup and tears. Bacon soup and tears. It didn’t make for a very catchy title, but Johnny bet he could bang out some funeral dirge on his organ inspired by that.</p><p>His spoon scraped sadly at the bottom of another now empty can of the vile stuff. There were scattered, only slightly licked, drawings of hot dogs all at his feet. The ink here was alive or something, and Johnny had hoped — well, he wasn’t too good at drawing hotdogs, so he wasn’t giving up hope yet that he could magic up one one day and imagine it didn’t taste like acrid ink and paper.</p><p>But until that day came, he needed more food. With silent determination, he tightened the remnants of his shirt (everyone had, over time, stripped down to the minimum required for decency in the oppressive, ink-ridden heat) around his forehead and steeled himself for what lay before him.</p><p>Johnny poked his head out of his room, the organ room. He’d staked his claim when he couldn’t find the exit and saw other folk doing the same at their desks or offices. The people at the desks didn’t last long. Those poor animators. Johnny learned real fast to avoid them no matter how they howled and begged and clawed at him for escape. The only escape he could offer them was an ax to the cranium, which wasn’t as fast a death as one would have thought.</p><p>Johnny didn’t carry an ax anymore. He preferred to run.</p><p>He slinked his way down the hall, looking in all directions including up, in case of enemies. Every door was a reminder of what had transpired here. Johnny was, somehow, the only one left. There were much worthier people who had deserved a chance to live, but here he was. He cried an awful lot these days, even though he couldn’t afford the tears.</p><p>The Music Department crew tried to stay together. They were a band, and, when that door locked forever, trapping them inside, they became family. But it hadn’t been enough.</p><p>First the brass section fell, then the percussion went down swinging. Strings, Johnny was proud to say, put up a damn good fight for their souls. He imagined it came from Sammy’s primary interest being strings, so they’d been through hell already getting his songs to the screen. But eventually all that was left were the woodwinds, and that included Johnny and his organ, one of the few instruments that couldn’t double as a bludgeoning tool if needed. But it was home, now.</p><p>The worst casualty and the saddest one was Sammy. The ink didn’t get him at first, or so Johnny and the others had thought, but with Sammy it had been insidious. Slitherin’ inside, settin’ up house. He had been a little off even before all this, muttering more than usual, writing feverishly in his notebooks things that clearly weren’t music notes, even though nobody dared get close to find out what it was.</p><p>He’d become more erratic over time, as more and more coworkers were slain or converted. And, in retrospect this should have been a dead give away, a lot of those who disappeared were called into private meetings in Sammy’s office. But they had hoped he would save them. He was their director, after all. Their conductor.</p><p>Johnny kept his head low as he scurried past the recording studio door. That had the worst memories. That had been the last safe space of the Music Department, tainted, yes, by the death of Violet Moore, the silent and solitary violinist who had been strung up like some sort of morbid sacrifice to a monster, but it was where the dwindling musicians convened, planned, bartered with one another for supplies and care. Johnny had gotten to know so many of his coworkers in there, their hopes and dreams and fears. So many fears.</p><p>They had looked to Sammy for guidance, and Sammy had led them astray. Johnny remembered the great battle of the recording studio. After the carnage, searchers in piles with splintered instruments impaled in them, the last of the woodwinds struggling to get air into her punctured lungs, there had only been Sammy and Johnny. And Sammy was about to do to Johnny what he’d done to Robby, who lay with what few brains he’d had spilling out a contrabassoon-shaped hollow in his skull. Johnny had taken a guitar to the leg, so could only drag himself pathetically toward the door and beg Sammy to please not. Sammy held his dented, blood-spattered bassoon aloft, ready to bring it down on Johnny’s head next. He was talking some nonsense about smiting the unworthy — which, first off, ouch, and, second off —</p><p>Then God bless Patricia Collins. Her piccolo had been sacrificed to a searcher’s face, and though Johnny had thought her as good as dead, she’d managed to arm herself with a violin bow and crawl with the angriest, most determined scowl Johnny had ever seen toward the two of them. Johnny figured the bow wouldn’t do much, but he was ultimately a coward, and Patty would give him at least a few more moments of life.</p><p>He didn’t think any of them expected it to stab right through Sammy Lawrence’s chest. There was the black of blood, and then there was the black of ink. You got real good at identifying the difference in the sodium-infused light of the studio. This was… this was very much not blood. It oozed sluggishly down the strong outlines of Sammy’s muscles. Sammy’s mask, an awful nightmarish rendition of Bendy’s face, twisted down to stare as skin began to melt and darken, the remnants of his humanity dissolving into ink. He wasn’t — he wasn’t Sammy anymore. The murdering all of his employees should have given it away, but Johnny had held out some small, flickering hope that crotchety old Sammy was still in there somewhere.</p><p>“PATRICIA!” Sammy roared, turning his attention to her. She wasn’t cowed. He’d screamed at her plenty before. Instead, she grabbed a flute and jammed it in next. She was a braver soul than Johnny could ever hope to be, and he hoped her death at Sammy’s melting hands had been swift. He didn’t know, though, because he had pulled himself to his feet and out the door.</p><p>Johnny ate sheet music and bits of wood for a good while after. He couldn’t bring himself to leave his room, both out of terror of Sammy roaming the halls, cooing his name with that sensual voice, and because his leg was bruised and swollen and he’d be at a severe disadvantage.</p><p>Luckily there was a watery stream of… well, he hoped water underneath his organ, leaking in from what was probably a burst pipe behind the wall.</p><p>Johnny was on the look-out for the three S’s — Sammy, searchers, and soup — when he heard a new S to add to that, singing.</p><p>“Susie?” He whispered. Johnny had somehow hoped she had escaped. Clearly, though, unless someone was playing some old recordings of her singing (which this didn’t sound like) she wasn’t so lucky.</p><p>Johnny followed the sound of her singing, hunger forgotten in this new quest. He was real lonely for a friend after the battle. He hadn’t heard his own voice for weeks now. Susie was a brave gal for lasting this long and making such a lovely ruckus.</p><p>He found her on a stage, spotlight shining down and hulking, groaning figures in the seats. They weren’t attacking. Johnny thought they might be entranced before he realized, after squinting real hard, they were tied down. That wasn’t… anything to worry about, right? Susie herself looked amazing from where Johnny was hiding, if a little pale. And be-horned and -halo’d.</p><p>That wasn’t anything to worry about either, right? Johnny might have been getting desperate for any escape from the monotonous, memory-filled hell of his current predicament. Besides, Susie had always been a sweet woman to anyone that wasn’t Sammy or Mr. Drew.</p><p>When Johnny knocked into a chair getting closer to her, he about gave himself a heart attack. Susie stopped singing immediately, and a large, ink-filled orb of an eye swung around to find him.</p><p>They stared at each other in silent surprise. Susie definitely wasn’t human anymore. Johnny swallowed.</p><p>“That was a real nice song, Miss Susie,” he said. The creatures — not searchers, something more solid but more mangled, almost like mockeries of the Butcher Gang — moaned pitifully.</p><p>She smiled with half a mouth, and Johnny could see the teeth in the other half through a hole, but he wasn’t going to hold that against her.</p><p>“Johnny, right?”</p><p>Johnny flushed that such a lady like Susie would remember his name. “Y-yes, ma’am. I play — well, used to play — the organ.”</p><p>“You’re still human.” Her voice sounded different, though it was still recognizably Susie.</p><p>“I think so, yeah.”</p><p>Susie hopped down off the stage and walked past her captive audience to Johnny. Her ink fingers were ice cold as she touched his face. It felt nice, in all this stuffiness and blushing.</p><p>“How have you survived this long?”</p><p>“I honestly have no idea, ma’am.” Johnny was afraid, but this wasn’t like Sammy’s madness. This was still Susie. Johnny could see it in her one, glowing gold eye.</p><p>A crash further away, somewhere deep in the studio, snapped both of their attentions to the door. Susie’s hand jerked away. In a split second, Johnny made a decision.</p><p>“I don’t mean to be improper, Miss Susie, but would you like to join me in my room? It’s pretty safe.”</p><p>“Safe… Safe is good,” she agreed.</p><p>Johnny’s heart beat so loud he as sure it was going to attract Sammy’s attention as he gently pulled Susie along, her slender ink fingers twined with his organist’s ones. He wasn’t proud exactly to show off his tiny hovel, full of hotdog drawings and nibbled notes, but Johnny wasn’t shy about it, either. He’d made it this far thanks to the organ room. He did try to pick up a little bit, offering Susie the nice cushion and a bacon soup can full of oily water from the wall. She took it but didn’t drink. He didn’t blame her.</p><p>They sat in awkward silence, staring intently at each other. Both seemed to have forgotten basic manners.</p><p>“I thought you might have escaped,” Johnny said, finally.</p><p>“No — Joey —“ Susie cut herself off. “I’ve been here a long time.”</p><p>“Like that?”</p><p>She nodded, staring at her own hand. It curled into a fist. “Joey did this to me. He made a mockery of me — of Alice!” Her voice pitched up into that second tone again, full of a rage Johnny wouldn’t have expected of her. “He did that, then when it all went wrong, he boarded up the doors, throwing us away like old dolls nobody wanted.”</p><p>Johnny had heard about the difficulties selling Alice Angel dolls, and that was his first thought hearing Susie mention them. He wisely didn’t voice that particular thought. It was strange, sitting here, talking to Susie-turned-Alice, in a nightmare realm both used to call work. He was so glad to not be alone, though. Susie was an absolute blessing.</p><p>“It wasn’t fair what happened to you.”</p><p>“No! It wasn’t!” She crushed the can in her hand like it was nothing, and water spouted up across her face and dress. “I was the perfect Alice Angel. I am — I will be — I just need to figure out how…” her voice trailed off thoughtfully.</p><p>Johnny looked down at his now damp hotdogs and his hopes for one day tasting them.</p><p>“Can you draw up a fixed up body? I mean, if you’re ink. It seems pretty versatile.”</p><p>Susie looked at Johnny like he was either mad or brilliant, but said nothing so he wasn’t sure which it was. They fell back into the silence of people who don’t know what it means to be people anymore.</p><p>The drip of water on the floor was the only indicator that time passed, until Susie uncurled from her cushion and handed Johnny his crumpled can.</p><p>“Oh, you’re leaving?” He asked, trying not to sound disappointed though what could Johnny ever offer <em> her </em>? </p><p>“An angel’s work is never done,” she sighed, flipping her thick ink hair.</p><p>“Just be careful of Sammy,” Johnny said, remembering some vague manners as he stood to let her out.</p><p>Susie froze. “Sammy?”</p><p>“Yeah, he’s here and he’s mad as a hatter. Killin’ people, sacrificing them, though I don’t know how many of us there are left <em> to </em> kill.”</p><p>“Sacrificing?”</p><p>Johnny nodded sadly. “It’s awful, what happened to him. He’s all…. inkified, but not as nicely as you. Thinks killin’ people will ‘free him from this inky dark abyss he calls a body’,” he quoted. The words were burned into Johnny’s memory. That was why people suffered. That was why people died. It was all tragically selfish.</p><p>Susie turned around and raised a finger to her chin. “Perhaps Sammy knows something we don’t.”</p><p>“I… don’t think he does, Miss Susie,” Johnny said carefully, his now finely-tuned sense of danger blaring warnings. He took a reflexive step away from her and her pointed gaze.</p><p>“Call me Alice, Johnny. I’m Alice Angel.”</p><p>“Y-yeah, the one and only. Sent from above, right?”</p><p>“You are very sweet, Johnny.” Her hand came up to Johnny’s face, and he flinched as she tucked a shaggy lock of hair behind his ear. He was harshly reminded of back when she was human, back when everything was normal (even if she’d been relegated to background roles again). Like with Sammy, Johnny had hoped Susie was still in there but, and this was a very bad time to realize this, he didn’t think so anymore. At least not entirely. “I’m sad we never spoke much before, because I think I might miss you.”</p><p>“Because you’re leaving?” He asked with a mixture of dread and hope.</p><p>“Yes, but not without testing something first.”</p><p>Her fingers jabbed into Johnny’s cheek, and he shrieked as he slammed the crumpled but still very sharp-edged can right into her big inky eye socket. It was enough for Susie — no, Alice to let him go, but Johnny had nowhere <em> to </em> go. She’s at the door and the room was barely bigger than a closet. It would have been nice if he’d had an ax.</p><p>Alice’s shriek of rage far outclassed Johnny’s. He scrambled stupidly and pointlessly to climb the organ’s pipes, only for an icy hand to twist in his hair and slam his face into them. Blood exploded from his nose and lip, and it tasted like bacon soup. Johnny kicked out like a horse and clawed at the pipes for leverage, but Alice was solid as brick. She slammed his face again into the pipes.</p><p>He slid down to the keys, blood oozing between them and gumming them all up. His poor organ. It had served him well and didn’t deserve this abuse. </p><p>Alice was saying words, but all Johnny heard was rushing water and static. She kept slamming him into the organ, knocking loose keys and teeth alike. Everything is muffled. His face was a fiery mess of agony. Johnny moaned.</p><p>Even through all the pain, he felt her frigid fingers. She was so strong. So angry. So hurt. His poor Susie — this wasn’t her. This was the ink. The ink that was splattering in front of Johnny’s wild eyes, or was that blood, or did it not even matter anymore? Alice picked him up and shoved and twisted and tore. Johnny wished he would die, and didn’t understand why he’s not. Maybe he wasn’t human and just never noticed. But would an ink monster want hotdogs anymore? Did they even know what food was?</p><p>He thought of having a hotdog with all the fixings with Susie and Sammy. They all deserved hotdogs.</p><p>Johnny’s thoughts faded away, blessedly freeing him from this world. Until he groaned again as new pain shot through his body and air was forcefully expelled from his lungs. He couldn’t see. He could only feel. Someone stroking his skin — no, his bones. Tickling along femurs, licking at his teeth. A shadowy presence, familiar yet alien, fingers playing along pieces of him nobody should ever touch, that should be safely ensconced in flesh and blood.</p><p>A voice, muffled, but with some effort Johnny could understand as it reverberated through channels far too long to be ears but what else could they be?</p><p>“...Never expected this. Things really are <em> quite </em> mutable here, aren’t they, Johnny?” Alice asked, playing another random note on the organ. Agony shivered along his spine as he cried out. “There’s so much to learn. So much to try. Thank you, dear. This has been an eye-opening experience.”</p><p>Johnny felt a glacier-imprint of lips on his throat — trachea — pipes?</p><p>“You sound wonderful, by the way. I’m sure that rat bastard Sammy loved you.”</p><p>Alice slammed her hands on the keys, dragging out a final, echoing wail that dragged on for an eternity. Then she left. Johnny couldn’t see, but he could feel. He could feel so much, flayed and reformed, everything wrong. Everything a fresh new hell.</p><p>His heart ached from the remnant vibrations, then stilled into absolute silence.</p>
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